FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to a apparatus for handling articles and preferably for packaging a plurality of articles which are presented in a strip of articles which are subsequently severed, deposited on a transporting or conveying device and then subsequently inserted in a receptacle such as a box.
In recent years it has been popular in restaurants to provide sugar, salt and condiments such as mustard and ketchup in individual packages for use by the customer. To package either a granular matter such as sugar and salt or a paste or liquid such as mustard or ketchup, it has been proposed to utilize a machine which folds a strip of paper or packaging material into a trough, forms individual pouches in the fold strip which are subsequently passed through a filling device to receive the contents through an open edge or side which is subsequently sealed. After sealing the filled pouch, it is severed from the strip and deposited in a receptacle such as a carton for shipment. Examples of this type of packaging machine and process are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,344,576, which issued to Charles E. Cloud et al. on Oct. 3, 1967 and U.S. Pat. No. 3,667,188, which issued to Benner, Jr. et al. on June 6, 1972.
To improve the handling of the individual severed pouches or packages, it has been proposed to use a cutting wheel working in conjunction with an index wheel which moves the strip of pouches in an arcuate path and severs the pouches in a step-like manner therefrom. To control the movement of the severed pouch or packet, various arrangements including the provision of a vacuum head have been suggested. Examples of these devices are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,597,898, which issued to Charles E. Cloud on Aug. 10, 1971.
It has been one practice to sell such pouches in bulk by packing them somewhat at random in a cartons, 2,000 pouches being packed in a carton. This type of cartoning obviously is very simply done. There has, however, been a demand for cartons containing smaller numbers of pouches as, for example, 100 to 200 pouches per carton. These smaller units are particularly useful to a restaurant, for example, for inventory control and for the convenience and efficiency of the waitress as she replenishes the pouches normally placed in a container at each table.
There are several approaches to the packing of small numbers of pouches in cartons. The simplest form is to hand pack the cartons wherein an operator might place the pouches, in groups of five, into a carton until the full complement of 100 or 200 is packed. On the other extreme is an automatic machine of the type disclosed in Cloud et al. application Ser. No. 389,804, filed Aug. 20, 1973, wherein the pouches are automatically counted and packed into a carton.
The present invention represents a compromise between the two extremes described above. In accordance with the present invention, pouches are automatically oriented in shingle fashion on a chute for packing into a carton, the oriented pouches simply being hand slid by an operator along the chute into a carton mounted on the chute. The use of the present invention permits the cartoning to be performed by a single operator approximately ten times as fast as the hand packing operation described above and yet costs only one-fifth the cost of an automatic machine.